Eye care is all about the health of your eyes and vision. Eye care marketing is all about attracting those eyes to your practice! How you use images in your marketing matters—people hold more information through visuals than text.
High-quality, interesting (but relevant) photos grab attention and help increase your brand awareness. That being said, finding these attention-grabbing photos can be difficult, especially if you’re looking for something free.
A simple Google image search can result in lower-quality photos that you may not have permission to use. If you use image content without permission, you risk legal action; the costs of the legal fees could be crippling for your business.
Fortunately, we wrote this blog with 5 great royalty-free stock photo sites available for commercial use and how to best use them in your eye care marketing.
Royalty-Free Stock Photos
Freepik
Freepik has some exclusive illustrations and high-quality graphic designs. The majority of the resources available at Freepik can be used for free, with the requirement that you give credit to the original creator. Freepik offers photos, illustrations, vector graphics, and PSD files for your use.
Pixabay
Pixabay has a large collection of quality pictures. It has a slightly more business and marketing focus than other stock photo sites. Pixabay also provides free vectors and illustrations, which is a big plus.
Pexels
The search feature on Pexels is what sets it apart from the competition. It’s easy to use and has a variety of helpful parameters, making it one of the most user-friendly stock photo websites.
Canva
Canva is a great online tool that goes even further than providing you with free stock photos. It can also be used to create graphic design content with no graphic design experience. Canva has resources and templates for:
- Social media posts
- Flyers
- Brochures
- Business cards
- Logos
Unsplash
Unsplash is another valuable resource for free stock photos in your eye care marketing. The website adds 10 new royalty-free images to its database every 10 days. The high-quality images on the website can be used in any aspect of your online presence or any marketing campaigns you design.
How to Use Stock Photos in Marketing
Now that you have tons of great stock photo resources, you have to know how to use them!
Social Media
One of the biggest reasons for using images in social media is that they create engagement. People want to look at pictures, but they also want to share them and see more of them; in fact, posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than those without images.
If you think back to the last time you had an e-mail that was simply a block of text, we’d be willing to bet you closed it and forgot about it. E-mail marketing that includes images has a higher open rate, and it’s common to hear that your clients would prefer to receive an e-mail that is primarily images.
Website
Many web professionals emphasize the importance of including images in the design and content of a website. Visual appeal is important. However, you can’t just use any image and expect it to work.
When adding images to the design of your website, make sure they are relevant and on brand. Images are intended to enhance a page and provide a visual aid for the topics on your site.
Using an appealing, well-paired image not only makes your content more attention-grabbing and easy to identify but also has the benefit of being more memorable over time. Users will remember imagery from your site to find the same content again when navigating through search results.
Blog
Blogs are a great tool to use as a way to establish your brand voice and drive more people to your eye care website.
Similar to e-mails, blogs that are just a huge block of text make people lose interest fast. Breaking up your content with relevant and eye-catching photos helps keep your reader’s interest and helps them retain the information you’re presenting in your blog.
Practice Collateral
This is where Canva can come in handy. Using their free templates can make great visual material for your clients, including brochures, handouts, and posters for around your practice.
Getting Started
Visuals are important for representing your brand and making sure that it stands out authentically among competitors. To be successful, the images you create or choose should be consistent with the message you send across all of your channels.
Whether you’re starting fresh or are well established, these stock photo sites are a great resource for you. Deciding how you want your eye care marketing to look can be an overwhelming but important item on your checklist.
If you would like help with anything from e-mail marketing, blog creation, or website design, we would love to help you out! Book a demo with us today.
